A thrust rolling bearing of the pre-cited type is known from U.S. Pat. No. 2,891,828. The drawback of this bearing consists in that the cage can come into contact with the race washers during operation. This can occur particularly when such thrust rolling bearings are used in converters of automobile transmissions. In certain operating states, the so-called shaft-locating washer lifts off from the rolling elements in axial direction with the result that the rolling element crown ring guided in a cage is unloaded and falls radially inwards to come into contact either with the shaft or the collar of the shaft-locating washer. If under these circumstances, the so-called housing-locating washer is not centered in the housing, it too falls axially inwards and comes to be supported on the cage.
When the shaft-locating washer comes anew into contact with the rolling elements, the cage is clamped-in and this leads on the one hand to malfunctioning and on the other hand, to an undesired high noise generation.
These drawbacks are encountered particularly whenever, with the aim of enhancing the bearing capacity of thrust cages, one endeavours to give the cage a structural configuration that permits the largest possible number of rolling elements to be lodged therein. Due to the large number of rolling elements fitted in the cage, the crossbars in the innermost region of the cage have only a very small material cross-section, i.e. the cage has a filigree structure. It is quite obvious that such a filigree cage is subject to a great danger of fracture when force transmission within the thrust rolling bearing takes place through this cage.